Biography Marianne (Mecklem) Appel

Born in New York in 1913, Appel took her first painting classes while attending Sarah Lawrence College from 1932-34.

In the summers of 1934 and 1935 she studied with Judson Smith at the Woodstock School of Painting, where she met Austin (Meck) Mecklem, an established landscape painter. They married in 1936 and for ten years lived in Meck’s cabin at The Maverick Colony.

Meck had been assigned to the WPA-sponsored Alaska Art Project, so in 1937 the couple traveled to Alaska, where Appel continued her own landscape painting, working in ink and in gouache. In 1939 the Art Institute of Chicago included her in its 18th International Water Color Exhibition.